Lex Luthor was brooding in the all-too-familiar surroundings of his study, a glass of scotch in his hand. The sonar weapon I'd been developing for the Pentagon, he thought bitterly, I can take losing that, it was a bagatelle, but the kelp--that one was closer to my heart. I was going to feed the world, and now it's all gone... Lex was despondent. In retrospect, he wished he hadn't kept the only specimen and all of the research notes right next to the now-exploded prototype for Project Leviathan, but it had seemed like such an efficient use of space. He stood up and began pacing. All that hard work, wasted--thanks to Clark and his new friend, that odd water-loving fellow. He shook his head--how on earth did Clark find these people? Then the phone rang; he walked over to his desk and answered it absent-mindedly, but the caller soon had his undivided attention.
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Lex parked his silver Porsche abruptly, leapt out, and jogged along the path to the beach--and when he got there, an amazing sight gladdened his heart. Kelp! He could see it growing beneath the surface of Crater Lake. He looked in amazement out over the water. It had survived, somehow. Not just survived, but thrived--there was oodles of it! He pulled off his shoes and socks, rolled up his cuffs, and waded out into the lake. He took a deep breath--the ordinarily-sweet-smelling air now had just a hint of a rotting funk to it. He smiled in appreciation, and shaded his eyes to better see the kelp as the late-afternoon sun sparkled on the water. Just then he sensed that someone was approaching, and he turned to find both Clark Kent and Arthur "A.C." Curry standing behind him on the sand. He waded back in to meet them.
"You were telling the truth." said Clark wonderingly. "I'm sorry, Lex."
"Dude, I mean, seriously--whoa. Kelp." added an incoherent A.C.
Lex was suddenly in a forgiving mood. He couldn't find it in him to be too hard on these headstrong but essentially well-meaning young men. And really, what lasting harm had been done? "That's okay," he said. "There's no point in assigning blame over who wrecked whose expensive Navy prototype and who came into whose study spewing sanctimonious bullshit--all's well that end's well." Some of the kelp had broken loose and washed ashore--Lex knelt down and scooped up a handful, looking for all the world like a proud father. "Look at it! Amazingly hardy, fast-growing, and twice--no, three times the nutrients of ordinary macrocystis pyrifera; it--Clark? What's wrong?" Clark had taken a few steps backward and was looking decidedly green around the gills.
"Nothing--I...think I'm allergic to it, that's all. I, uh, have to go home--chores." He beat a hasty retreat. Lex watched him go, with concern in his eyes--allergic to delicious, nourishing kelp? Poor Clark. Were these allergies common? He had never heard of such a thing.
"Bro, look; there's like...some more kelp now, or something." A.C. pointed out at the lake, and Lex agreed, there did seem to be more of it. It was designed to grow quickly, of course, but not quite this quickly.
A.C. furrowed his brow and added, "The, uh, stuff--maybe it's being...affected by the--y'know, what with this being Crater Lake and all." Lex nodded and agreed that yes, the copious meteor rocks in the lake might well be influencing the kelp's growth--perhaps A.C. would like to come back to the lab and help him analyze it? He was a promising student of marine biology, as Lex understood.
"No way, dude--you were torturing me in that lab, just yesterday!" His memory of being strapped to a table and having Lex tantalize him with a desperately-needed glass of water was still vivid.
Lex conceded that point, but explained that it had all been in the name of protecting the kelp; A.C. had tried to blow up the lab, after all.
"Well, okay, fair enough. Hey, maybe I had you all wrong, bro; looks like you do care about the water and our awesome undersea friends," replied the orange-and-green-clad Floridian. They shook hands, and the two of them departed for the nearby underwater laboratory.
After a while, Clark returned--with the beach to himself, and the threat of Lex brandishing fistfuls of Kryptonite-irradiated kelp at him removed, he could look for his sunglasses in peace; he had lost them at the beach party. A couple of passes with his x-ray vision over the sand, and they turned up, safe and sound. He also found a couple bucks in change, as well as someone's hearing aid. He was struck by a thought: could it improve his already-amazing hearing? It seemed functional, so he wiped the sand off and stuck it in his ear--darn, no difference. He could hear the approaching Lana and Chloe just as well without it, so he flung the greasy thing out into the lake, and noted that there were now only a few patches of open water--the rest was kelp. Lana and I won't be skinny-dipping here anytime soon, he thought.
"Hey, who's up for some skinny-dipping?" Lana asked playfully, coming up behind him. Chloe was beside her and said, "We heard something weird was happening at the lake and came to check it out--wow, that's a lot of seaweed."
"Kelp," Clark corrected her. "Lex told me he was going to end world hunger with it, but I didn't believe him."
"Well, I don't know if I believe him either; it doesn't look very appetizing," offered Chloe. "And kelp is seaweed, Clark." The kelp had spread right up to the shore--now there was just sand, and then kelp. And was the shore area starting to...diminish? Stalks of the marine plant were sprouting out all over.
Meanwhile, having arrived at the lab, A.C. and Lex were getting down to business.
"Gnarly; check it out, man--it's continuing to grow, even out of the water." Lex acknowledged this, with some apprehension--as proud as he was of his creation, it couldn't solve world hunger if it was running amok. A.C. continued, "It's grown exponentially in the past hour--left on its own it'll cover the surface of the Earth, like, surprisingly quickly, dude." Lex thought that was an exaggeration, but suggested that they should probably try to retard the kelp's growth--perhaps with fire? "Whoa--cherry idea! Hey, can I have a glass of water?" Lex pointed to the water cooler.
At the beach, Lana had gone off into the bushes for a pee. Clark, increasingly alarmed by the greenish-brown mass advancing toward him, took this opportunity to give the stuff a vigorous blast of heat vision. To his dismay, the only result was some steam and a squelching noise. And then a bad smell. "Oh, ick," said Chloe, wrinkling her nose adorably. "Come on, let's get out of here," she said, adding with a grin, "Seaweed, kelp--we need help."
Clark laughed at that. But there wasn't really anything they could do--let someone else deal with this calamity, for once. He was still on vacation. "Hey, I'm sure Lex and A.C. are on top of this. Let's book." They retrieved Lana and the three friends departed, as the sun went down on another beautiful summer day at Crater Lake.
In the lab, A.C. had been thinking and now burst out excitedly, "Bro, I know what would totally take care of this runaway kelp if we can't burn it off." Lex waited patiently. "Sea slugs! Those little dudes love to chow down on seaweed!" Lex shook his head exasperatedly and pointed out that a) large quantities of sea slugs were hard to come by in central Kansas, and b) this 'solution' would almost certainly create a terrifying mutant slug problem. No, if the napalm he'd called in from LuthorCorp didn't do the job, things were just going to get exceedingly weedy around here. "Serves me right for trying to help humanity," he muttered. Across the room, A.C. chugged down another tall glass of water, belched, and loudly exclaimed, "Bitchin' H2O, bro!" Lex shuddered.
END